


practical magic

by mr_charles



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Katrina and Abbie are the witnesses, OOC-ish, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 02:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2491253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mr_charles/pseuds/mr_charles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Katrina who wakes up the same time the Horseman does. It's Katrina and Abbie who are the witnesses. It's Katrina and Abbie who help pull Ichabod out of Purgatory. </p><p>or the fic where Katrina is a Witness and adapts to the 21st century and really likes Little Debbie's and skinny jeans</p>
            </blockquote>





	practical magic

It’s a woman, with red hair and a musty dress that smells like a swamp, who the Sleepy Hollow Police Department finds.

She calls herself Katrina Crane in a posh accent, holds up her bleeding arm, and claims a metal box hurt her. When Irving hooks her up to a lie detector, she tells them she’s a witch who lost her husband, Ichabod, in the Revolutionary War and the Headless Horseman is Death himself come to Sleepy Hollow.

The lie detector says she’s telling the truth. 

When Abbie picks her up the next morning at the psychiatric facility, she finds Katrina crying with her face pressed against the mirror and whispering “come back to me, my love”.

Abbie moves into the cabin with her. Katrina spends a whole afternoon touching everything in the place. She flushes the toilet 37 times and spends 45 minutes turning the faucet on and off again. 

“You had theater in your day, right?” Abbie asks.

“Yes, I was in several productions of-“ Katrina stops when Abbie turns the television on. 

Katrina spends three days in front of the television. 

 

At night, Abbie hears noises in the bathroom. She sees Katrina caressing the mirror and crooning about her love. 

“Miss Mills, you probably wonder what I’m doing with your mirror.” She tells Abbie her husband is trapped with Death and uses the mirror to communicate with him. 

Her husband tells her that it’s up to Katrina and Abbie to save him. And save the world. He says they’re “witnesses”, of a Biblical sort.

Katrina spends two hours telling Abbie about Ichabod. She starts with their earliest courtship (hand holding in front of her parents was the most scandalous thing they did before marriage) up to Ichabod being maimed on the battlefield by soldiers angry with him fighting for the Americas. 

She cries. A lot. Abbie holds her hand and realizes how much she misses Jenny. 

“My apologies, Miss Mills,” Katrina sniffles, wiping her eyes. “Ladies do not allow themselves to blubber, especially in front of respectable friends.”

Abbie catches her by the wrist. “Katrina, it is the 21st century. You can’t even turn on the TV without seeing someone ‘blubber’. And seeing as, y’know, your husband is trapped in between worlds and you just know figured out electricity, it’s okay to cry.” She brings Katrina a handful of tissues and says goodnight. 

 

On day four, Abbie tells her about the shower. It’s the nicest way to tell Katrina she smells. Abbie brings her two pairs of sweat pants, three t-shirts, a nightgown, and a bag of generic cotton underwear from the drugstore. Katrina’s dress smells so bad that Abbie wants to burn it.

Katrina comes out of the bathroom an hour later, smelling her hair. “Miss Mills, my hair smells like-“ another deep inhale “-mint and-“

“Lemon,” Abbie finishes. 

 

They manage to ensnare the Horseman the first time with Katrina running around, screeching enchantments while wearing a pair of sweat pants, slippers, and Abbie’s police department hoodie. 

 

One time, when Abbie got Jenny out of the facility, Jenny’s doctor talked to Abbie about “integration” and how to ease Jenny back into society. He gave her a handful of pamphlets and said, “it’ll be a struggle, Ms. Mills, but you can help rehabilitate Jenny.” 

Jenny plucked the car keys out of Abbie’s hand and announced that she wanted some chicken McNuggets and did Abbie want anything off the dollar menu? Jenny went back to the facility but Abbie kept the pamphlets. 

Unfortunately, there’s no chapter on “how to introduce a colonial witch to Twitter”.

 

While the Horseman is chained up in the tunnels, Abbie sits down next to Katrina with an armful of magazines. “We can’t have you fighting whatever the hell that is while wearing a ballgown,” she says. She flips through the pages of the magazines. “Get an idea of what you like. Tomorrow we’ll go shopping. ”

They go to the local shopping mall. “My cousin grew up in one of those Amish communities,” Abbie says to salespeople who stare at Katrina (still in Abbie’s hoodie and sweatpants) as she holds up necklaces and handbags with a look of confusion. 

The grey-haired, soft-eyed woman behind the counter in the women’s section of the department store measures Katrina for bottoms and… oh God, Abbie was dreading this part, bras. She was thinking Katrina would go for those boho-chic long skirts the kids are wearing these days and long, shapeless t-shirts in every color. 

Abbie doesn’t look at what Katrina takes into the fitting room. 

“Miss Mills, I do believe I have found something that works!” Abbie finds her twirling in the fitting room lobby in the hoodie and a pair of tight, dark skinny jeans. “My mother would be beside herself if she saw me in something like these!” Katrina’s eyes are bright with laughter. “Imagine if Ichabod saw me in trousers!” The brightness dims but Katrina is still smiling. 

 

Abbie buys her enough clothes for a week. Katrina flushes pink at the sight of the lingerie department but Abbie directs her to the plainest bras. “White, beige, black- the basic colors,” she explains. Abbie grabs one in each color in the size that the woman who measured Katrina wrote on a post-it note. 

She lets Katrina pick out her socks. She grabs a pack of eight in neon colors. “Look, Miss Mills, they have feline faces on them!” 

Jeans, tops, underwear, undershirts, socks, and a pair of tennis shoes usually seen on high schoolers- Abbie makes a mental note to call her phone company and let them know her payment is going to be late. 

 

“How does it work again, Miss Mills?” Katrina yells through the bathroom door.

“Wrap the band around your ribs with the hook in the front, put the hooks through the second set of eyes, twist it back around, put your arms through the straps, and put your…” Abbie pauses, “girls in the cups!”

Silence. Annoyed mumbling. 

“Oh!”

 

After Jenny breaks out of the facility, the three of them live in the cabin. Katrina calls Jenny “Miss Jenny” and Jenny tells her about the things on the internet that Abbie doesn’t even want to think about. 

“Don’t give her those!” Abbie snaps as Jenny passes Katrina a gas station chocolate pastry. 

“Miss Jenny has already given me five of them!”

“I thought I told you not to tell her about those, Ginger Spice.”

 

Abbie and Katrina fight dream monsters. Jenny and Abbie fight over whether or not Katrina should know about Mountain Dew. They fight evil witches. They fight over who gets first shower. The Horseman escapes and the threat of Moloch looms. Abbie goes on a 2am maxi pad run when Katrina wakes her up and asks where she keeps the cloth. 

 

Katrina gets a job. It’s Jenny’s idea. She works on the pier during tourist hours with a sign saying “PSYCIC READING FIVE DOLLARS”. She uses herbs and roots and looks at clammy palms to tell them their futures. Stuffy businessmen want to know if their wives are cheating on them. Soccer moms line up around the dock for recipes for love potions and aphrodisiacs. Little kids hand her sweaty pennies and want to know what mommy is getting them for their birthday. 

“I know not, little one,” she says gently and they giggle and run away. 

 

She and Abbie defeat a coven of witches who’ve used their powers for revenge and murder. It’s on Christmas Eve and Jenny is out of the facility for good. They spend the night watching bad Christmas movies on TV. They all make a sleeping nest on the floor with every blanket and pillow they can find in the cabin.

“G’night Abbiekins.”

“G’night Jennyroo.”

A pause.

“G’night Kat-Kat.”

“Sweet dreams, Miss Jenny and Miss Mills.”

 

The thaw comes and an ancient spell book found by Jenny years before helps them free Ichabod from between worlds. It takes the three of them to pull his body out of the dirt and he looks at them wildly for a long minute.

“My love!” Katrina cries, dropping to her knees in the dirt and embracing her husband. 

“Katrina!” Ichabod sputters. “You’re wearing trousers!”

“200 odd years in the dirt and he’s confused by pants,” Jenny snorts. 

 

They take Ichabod back to the cabin and Katrina is babbling a million words a minute.

“Ichabod, darling, I have made a career out of my craft! The townspeople do not try to burn me. In fact, they give me more money than you made in a year to tell them when they’ll meet their true love!” 

Abbie calls for sushi delivery (shortly after the New Year, she convinced Katrina to try some and she ate two whole platters) while Katrina shows her husband the television.

Jenny looks at Abbie over the table. “You know, for two dorks who are over 400 years old combined, they are pretty cute.”  

**Author's Note:**

> ooc? yes. fun? hopefully.
> 
> I just have this theory that Katrina would be a modern-day witch who wears a lot of boots year-round and likes chai and binge watches the Kardashians when she thinks nobody is looking


End file.
